February 15

Grammar

This year, we’ve been practicing a lot with writing sentences. We’ve learned about making our sentences varied and more complex, bumping up our sentences with juicy words, and much more! Many students get confused with where to put punctuation which affects the flow and comprehension of their piece.

Every morning, Mrs. Sullivan leaves a message on the Smartboard riddled with ‘mistakes’ that students must then have to correct. Today, we learned what must be a part of a sentence which is 2 things: a subject and a predicate.

We watched this video to help us understand these words and followed up with some independent practice. 

 

Can you figure out if these are sentences or not?

  1.  Mrs. Sullivan’s class decided to
  2. Where in the world
  3. The squirrel in the tree
  4. Under my desk is some dirt
  5. The puzzle on the table
  6. Sam is wearing a red top

 

February 4

Welcome to February!

January has come and gone and the learning continues in our classroom. Students are hard at work learning about nonfiction text features, how reading nonfiction differs from reading fiction, and more. We are being encouraged to explore nonfiction text both online and on paper. Miss Jeffries, our librarian, came in to teach us about an online database called Britannica School. It is a great way for students to research topics of their choosing. The articles can even read to the students! 

We’ve wrapped up our Social Studies unit on communities in Ontario and played a review game called “Quiz Quiz Trade” to help prepare us for our final test. 

Our Snowglobe stories are published and hanging on display in our classroom for all to admire. They are a fun read! We have such imaginative students in our room.

In math, we learned about movement on a grid along with cardinal directions (N,S,E,W) as well as directional turns (clockwise, counterclockwise, quarter turns, half turns).  Our current unit is all about measurement, including telling time! Stay tuned for another post about that.

Feel free to leave us a comment and ask us any questions about our learning.

We hope you all have a great day!Happy Groundhog Day Gif

 

 

November 19

We Are Authors

After many weeks of learning about personal narratives, we finally had our Publishing Party to celebrate our finished work!

In our unit on personal narratives, we learned how to generate ideas, how to select an idea, how to write using juicy details, how to apply the ‘Show, Don’t Tell’ strategy, what is a seed story versus a watermelon story, different ways of how to write a lead, and more!

In our class, we read many of our classmates’ stories and left some compliments.  We shared our stories with the Grade 7/8s and they were a wonderful audience!

We finished our celebration with a snack and an impromptu dance party. Fun!

Wonderful work, Grade 3s!

October 13

A Work of Heart

We are learning to be wide awake as writers and pay attention to what amazing stories we have to tell from our own lives. Our first unit is writing a personal narrative which is a true story about something that happened in our lives.

Students have been gathering ideas in their notebooks and finally we have chosen the one idea we will nurture and develop over the next short while. We will learn to write a lead, add juicy details, maybe add some dialogue, and learn how to make a conclusion to our story. 

Some ideas students have thought of include:

  • searching for seashells at the beach
  • going on a rollercoaster for the first time
  • visiting Grandma and Grandpa’s boat
  • going bowling and scoring my highest goal ever

There are so many wonderful stories we can tell from our own own lives. We can’t wait to publish them! Stay tuned. 

In the pictures below, we are story-telling. We are using elaboration and asking questions of our partner to tell us more about the event in our life that we are writing about. 

May 19

Poetry Revision

We’ve been writing poetry the last few weeks and are nearing the end of our unit. Our focus has been on free-verse poems which we love because there are NO rules!

We’ve been learning about how to find poems that hide all around us, living wide awake as writers. We learned that we need to pay close attention to our lives and see, feel, touch, smell, and listen closely.

Poems sometimes whisper to us and other times they yell. Poems live in our houses, in our classroom, on the school yard, at the beach, in our cottage, at a restaurant, in a boat…EVERYWHERE!

Here’s some of the strategies we’ve added to our poetry ‘toolbox’:

  • Looking at the world with fresh eyes
  • listening for line breaks
  • using juicy, precise words
  • Using show, don’t tell
  • similes, metaphors
  • alliteration
  • onomatopoeia
  • personification

 

We are creating our poetry anthologies through Google Slides and are handing in our very best 6-8 poems. In class today, our focus was on revising our poems–looking at them again with a partner. We read some advice from famous poets and came to understand that revision is an important piece of the writing process, even for poetry!

May 4

Penpals!

Have you ever had a penpal? It’s fun to communicate with someone and especially fun to get a reply! We’ve been corresponding with another class from Oakville and will continue to the end of this school year. It’s great practice in proper letter writing skills and we always look forward to hearing from our penpal friends.

We will send our next set of letters this week! 

November 27

Punc.tua,tion!? Matter:s

Why do teachers always talk about where to put periods commas quotation marks Mrs Sullivan read us a funny book called Punctuation Takes a Vacation Our class really liked the story and thought it was an interesting idea that punctuation could go on a trip and not be available anymore What a problem that would be for everyone Everyone appreciates how punctuation helps with understanding
Leave a comment down below but do not use any punctuation Lets see if we can
figure out what you are trying to say
Which punctuation mark is your favourite and why is it a mark that is easy to use
May 29

Sharing Our Realistic Fiction Stories

Despite learning from a distance, you have been working so well on completing your stories.I feel like the blog is an easier space to share your work, so that’s why we’re here!

Leave a comment below sharing some positive feedback to your classmates!

By Henry:

[embeddoc url=”https://learningin21.edublogs.org/files/2020/05/HenrysStory-1.pdf” width=”60%” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]

 


Lucas’ Story

[embeddoc url=”https://learningin21.edublogs.org/files/2020/05/George-musculars-famous-shakes-2.pdf” width=”60%” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]

[embeddoc url=”https://learningin21.edublogs.org/files/2020/05/PaulsStory-1.pdf” width=”60%” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]

[embeddoc url=”https://learningin21.edublogs.org/files/2020/05/Annie.docx” width=”60%” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]

[embeddoc url=”https://learningin21.edublogs.org/files/2020/05/Chloefinal.pdf” width=”60%” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]

Nicole’s Story

[embeddoc url=”https://learningin21.edublogs.org/files/2020/05/NicolesStory.pdf” width=”60%” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]

Category: 2019-2020, Writing Workshop | Comments Off on Sharing Our Realistic Fiction Stories
March 13

Celebrating Nonfiction Writing

Our Grade 3/4 class has completed creating their very own nonfiction books. They each chose a topic that was meaningful or interesting to them. Recently, they enjoyed sharing their beautiful nonfiction books…at last! We enjoyed leaving each other compliments and learning about different topics such as:

  • deadliest animals
  • lions
  • dogs
  • cats
  • Saskatchewan Rush
  • Poland
  • Paris
  • and so many more!

Students worked hard to ensure their book included a title page, table of contents, information about their topic, a glossary, and an About the Author page.

We read our books to Miss M’s Grade 2 class who enjoyed hearing all about our topics.

I enjoyed reading every book and the students seemed very proud of their work. I think it will make a nice keepsake for years to come. Well done!

 

Category: 2019-2020, Reading Workshop, Teacher Talk, Writing Workshop | Comments Off on Celebrating Nonfiction Writing
December 4

There, Their, They’re

These 3 little words often cause a lot of confusion with both kids and adults alike. We’ve been working on knowing when to use these different spellings in class. Here’s a short video that provides some great tips on how to remember which form of the word you should be using:

Category: 2019-2020, Teacher Talk, Writing Workshop | Comments Off on There, Their, They’re